While Ireland continue to struggle in a world without Jonny Sexton, perhaps an answer to the problem of who should replace him at fly-half lies in Devon. Gareth Steenson steered Exeter to their second victory over the English champions this season, this one in front of a full house here. Perhaps that is to damn his performance with faint praise because by the end, having grown bored with the steering wheel, he was slaloming his way through bewildered defenders to set up a win that his previous accurate goal-kicking had made possible.

"The way he played today and the way Ireland fly-halves seem to be going down, you never know, do you?" said Richard Baxter, Exeter's head coach, of Steenson's international prospects. "It would be fantastic for him if someone decides they want to have a look at him. He's not going to let anyone down with the form he's in at the moment."

Nor should this performance be dismissed as a one-off. The way he managed proceedings in Dublin in October, when Exeter were unlucky indeed to lose 9-6 to the Heineken Cup champions, Leinster, set the Irish scribes muttering in admiration. And the week before that he had been at the helm when Exeter claimed their first win this season over Harlequins, at Sandy Park, by 42-28.

The guy can play and he kicks his goals – he slotted five out of five penalties to keep Exeter abreast of Harlequins, before they pulled away with two tries in the last 12 minutes, the first sparked by Steenson's brilliant break, his second in five minutes. That break a few minutes earlier, even more outrageous, would have resulted in a try had Luke Arscott not spilled the final pass on the cutback.

Steenson will be 29 next month, so Ireland may feel more inclined to turn to younger alternatives, but he is relatively new to the highest reaches of club rugby. He left Ulster as a young man and spent the following years in the Championship at Rotherham and Cornish Pirates, before Exeter took him on. That means this is his third season as a Premiership player. He is continuing to improve, as are Exeter.

"It's a win for different reasons for us," Baxter said. "There wasn't any fear of relegation. That's been gone for a while. What this was about was fighting our way back into the top half of the league and potentially a Heineken Cup spot. That's why it's a very pleasing win, because we've put in a big performance based on ambition not fear."

The Harlequins' director of rugby, Conor O'Shea, whom many see as another solution to Ireland's problems, was gracious in defeat, if clearly frustrated that his side struggled to hold on to the ball while peddling their characteristic high-tempo game. "If you look at Exeter this season, they just keep on coming and coming and coming. It finally took its toll. I take my hat off to them. I thought they were outstanding.

"But we're massively, massively disappointed. We have two very tough away games coming up [against Saracens and Gloucester]. We reacted the last time Ex did this to us pretty well and went on a very long winning streak. We'll just get our processes right. We didn't get them in place today. We did a lot of things all right but all right isn't good enough in this league."

The struggle at the top is as tight now as the struggle in the middle for Europe, which is as tight as the struggle at the bottom to avoid relegation. Every game has something riding on it, and players like Steenson are thriving. It does not make him a guaranteed success at international level, but as a crucible to forge one it is as intense as any.